Bowling is a very popular participant sport enjoyed by young and old alike. Almost every bowler would like to improve this or her average score, and a most important aspect to any improvement is be taught the proper foot starting positions and the proper lane marker or spot over which the ball should be rolled.
A number of prior art patents address the above mentioned problems with mechanical devices that can be used to indicate proper starting foot positions and board markers. For example, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,374,557 of Lotarius a game guide is described including a base member imprinted with the representation of bowling alley, and a transparent overlay having a plurality of straight lines imprinted on it. The overlay is moved across the surface of the base member to indicate various relationships between the target pins, the board markers, and foot starting positions.
In U.S. Pat. No. 3,445,032 of Vail an aid for spot bowlers is disclosed including a rectangular plastic card having the representation of a bowling alley printed on its upper surface, a sliding cover engaged with the card, and an arcuate pointer supported on a pintle that extends between the card and the cover. The front end of the pointer can be positioned next to the pin formation indices on the base card, and the rear end of the pointer suggest an approach path to the foul line.
In Pat. No. 3,279,097 of Tomblim, a bowler's slide rule is described including a base portion having the image of a bowling alley printed on its top surface, and a clear strip adjustable attached to the base having both a straight and a curved line imprinted upon it. The base and the clear strip are attached together by a clamp riding in a pair of slots provided in the base and the strip. The clear strip is manipulated to indicate various starting positions and board markers.
In U.S. Pat. No. 3,250,535 of Patterson et al, the bowling ball path indicator display at the far end of the lane is modified to include five-to-seven lamps across the bottom of the display. The lamps are representative of the five-to-seven lane markers individually driven with the generation of the different arrows of the path lamp display.
Many of the above-described aids for the individual bowler, are cumbersome to use and present the bowler with difficult data entry problems. Where such aids employ co-acting mechanical paris, speed of data generation is also slow. Additionally, they must be coordinated with other information ordinarily provided to the bowler but the significance of which is not understood by the beginning or intermediate bowler. For example, the mechanical devices described above require that the bowler know which pin he should aim for. Furthermore, circuit improvements related to the bowling path display at the bowling alley, can only be used if the owners of the bowling alleys choose to implement them. Furthermore, they still require a degree of judgement and knowledge that a beginning or intermediate bowler may not have. For example, they require that the bowler's start foot positions also be known. Since the bowler may not know where to start, he or she may direct the ball to the wrong pin. Still further, none include a microcomputer for operations in association with a portable replica of the actual bowling alley as described hereinafter.